Photo courtesy of Gordon; Flickr Creative Commons 2.0
Landscaping is an important part of home ownership. Unless you have a homeowner’s association managing your landscaping and lawn care, that falls on you as a homeowner to maintain. When you are thinking of selling your home, appearances matter more than ever. If you invest in landscaping, will it pay off?
Experts say that typical landscaping projects will give you a 150% return, but your results may vary depending on the location, size, and quality of your project.
High-End Landscaping Tips
If you are working on a high-end home, you need high-end landscaping. Features like a pool or waterfall can be a nice draw, but do not forget to pay attention to the smaller details first before sinking cash into a major upgrade.
Ensure you have appropriate trees and lighting first. Pick the right trees for your climate, and add complementary upward facing lighting. This can draw people’s eyes to the home design and high-end vegetation.
Budget Landscaping Tips
Green ground cover is inexpensive, along with mulch or woodchips for larger areas. You can surround those areas with potted flowers, low-cost trees, shrubs, or bushes. When planting shrubs and bushes, remember to space them far enough apart to allow for some growth.
You can also add large rocks around the edges of different areas of your yard, or even add a large boulder as a decoration. You can sometimes find large rocks and boulder for free at construction sites.
Xeriscaping for Low Water Landscaping Tips
With water shortages along the entire West Coast and much of the Rocky Mountains, people are moving more toward xeriscaping instead of traditional green lawns. Xeriscaping is a landscaping technique designed to lower your water usage.
If you are in a desert climate such as those found in Nevada or Arizona, you can landscape with desert friendly plants, sand, gravel, and large desert rocks and boulders. Matching your yard to the native landscape will require very little water or upkeep.
In other climates, you can still use low water landscaping to save water. In the long-term, this can save you a ton of money that you used to spend watering your lawn. You can find some beautiful, low water plants in many colors. Look to popular home design websites like HGTV and Houzz for ideas.
Do Something to Make It Stand Out
Many blocks and neighborhoods have standout homes that look just a little nicer than the others. Thoughtful, well planned landscaping can be the difference between a quick sale and a slow moving home listing.
If you already have a trustworthy real estate agent, you can work together to pick upgrades with a good potential return on investment. If you are not selling right away, landscaping can still be a nice upgrade for your home. It can increase the value and make it a nicer place to live.
Want Even More Value on Your Improvements? Try Doing Some Yourself.
This DIY home improvement site has some good articles and step-by-step how-to guides written by DIY experts and enthusiasts. If you want to get the most value from your home improvements try some of the projects listed in this blog. Their Step-By-Step guides can get you started and help you along the way. They also have some great home improvement ideas too. It’s a British site, but a lot of their suggestions work in the US too.
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